Why Being An Airline Pilot Is A Cool Job--Reason #43357832

For those of us who have avoided honest work all our lives by hiding out as aviation journalists, even we have to admit to a twinge of jealousy over an announcement from Britannia Airways. It turns out that there are some new benefits to flying the heavy iron for Britannia. In order to get rid of 40+ pounds of manuals, Britannia is equipping their 430 flyers with IBM ThinkPad X24 laptop/notebooks.

Britannia Airways pilots will use them to do all the critical prep and ongoing work necessary to handle their fleet of Boeing 737s, 757s and 767s. The ThinkPads will be used to store approved electronic versions of their flight manuals, as well as aircraft/flight data and ease the the everyday chores of pre-flight and inflight management. The notebooks only weigh some 3.5 pounds each. IBM says the laptops will save some pilots as much as 36 pounds of paper. The deal is worth about $1.6 million, including a seven-year service contract. The X24 retails between $1849 and $2324, and sports a battery life of up to five hours.

This has to be one of the coolest benefits we know of in regards to flying for a major airline... second only to SouthWest Airlines' intensely cool leather jackets.

FMI: www.britanniaairways.com, www.ibm.com